User talk:Adam Keller
Re: Princip Please see the note I left on the talk page for Princip in Southern Victory. It boils down to the fact that Franz Ferdinand was blown up in Southern Victory, and because several would-be assassins were carrying grenades that day, it could easily have been one of them. TR 22:35, March 19, 2010 (UTC) Ebro :Mr. Keller, please see my notes. For one thing, the Lit note made infinitely more sense in the broader Spanish Civil War article, because it very quickly stopped being about the Battle of the Ebro and went on to speak far more broadly about the war itself. :As for the significance of the battle--no, there was no breakthrough as you maintained in the article. On pg 245, we learn that the "war on the Ebro had frozen solid." On page 431, they're still on the Ebro line. The characters actually say "we can hold the Ebro line." Nobody is cheering the breakthrough, no one has moved forward. TR 20:15, April 14, 2010 (UTC) :Yes, Vinaroz was taken and retaken. Put that in an article about Vinaroz. That doesn't prove the Ebro breakout. Citing maps counts for only so much, but characters bitching about sitting on the Ebro does not support the proposition that the Ebro was a breakout. It does the opposite. I think you are running together severl points as some larger whole. Understandable, since HW is horrible about giving any big picture. But I think you are assembling some diverse parts to get to that whole, and they don't fit together. TR 20:15, April 14, 2010 (UTC) :: Sorry, yiou miss the whole strategic point of what the batte was all about. The Battle of the Rbro was about Republican forces breaking out of Catlaonia, heading south, and reuniting the Repubican territory which was cut in two. Vinaroz is not just a town, it is a symbol - that is where the Nationalists got to the sea in April 1938 and made a very big cheer about it (as they should have - that was about the most decisive point of the whole war!}. The Republicans re-taking the town and reuniting their territory is just as important in the opposite direction. The re-reuniting of the Republican territory was what the battle was all about, a strategic issue which determined the course of the whole war. If there was no breakout, there could not have been a reunification of the Republican territory. If there was no breakout, there could not have been a Reoublican forece coming out of Catalonia with French airplanes and armour and reaching Vinaroz. The Republican force going southwards out of Catalonia was the force which crossed the Ebro, which in OTL got blocked and never advanced and was in the end thrown bacl across the Ebro. This was the force which in the book's timeline got French armour and planes and moved southwards until it got to Vinaroz. And it was - as clearly stated in the book - the local wprkers' militias were put at the head, they were the ones who got to Vinaroz and later defended it against the Nationalists and the Italians, while the International Brigades remained behind at the Ebro, possibly becuase they had been about to be pulled out of Spain altoggether (in OTL they were). I repeat - if you leave out the reuniting of the Republican teritory, you tear out the main strategic aspect of this battle. :::The Catalonia break-out takes place on page 105. On 245, see above, the Ebro line had stalled. They're still on the Ebro on 245, and on 431. The lack of clarity in the text made understaning the point of your article unclear. :::I will restore the article after some line editing. 04:23, April 15, 2010 (UTC) :::: I looked again at the map of the Battle of the Ebro provided in Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Batalla_Ebro.png and I think there is a way of reconciling all the confusing bits of information scattered in the book. As you can see, there were two Republican "bulges" across the Ebro, neither of them very big, and in OTL that is how far they ever got, and were eventually thrown back. It is quite plausible that in the alternate timeline when the French planes and armour got there, there was a breakout from one of these bulges but not from the other. The coverall-wearing workers' militias (Spanish citizens and most probably Catalans) broke out in their sector, went a long way southwards until Vinaroz and reunited the Republican territory, a big victory with strategic implications; the Interantional Brigades did not manage a breakout in their own sector and remained stuck on the Ebro. That would fit with all the information provided in the book. This could make good sense also from the political point of view of the infighting of political factions in the Republic and its impact on military operations. In Chapter 23 (the page numbers in my copy are dufferent from yours, I think, but it is the part where Harvey Jacoby persuades the Lincoln Brigade soldiers to accept the move to Madrid) there is a specific and long reference to the Communists having lost influence on the Republican government now that they have the support of France and the Soviet supply ships stopped arriving. It would make perfect sense for the Republican Government to have provided the support of the French planes and armour to non-Communist militias and denied them to the Communist-dominated Intenrtional Brigades. Things were often like that in the Spanish Republic OTL (one of the reasons they lost). And in that case there is no wonder you find no scene of the International Brigades people elated at the breakthrough - they would have very mixed feeling, happy for the overall Republican cause but very frustrated and angry for themselves. Adam Keller 11:11, April 15, 2010 (UTC)